FROM the beginning, the whole long, absurd, obscene campaign always carried a bitter air of inevitability.

You’ve thought it before. You might as well get used to saying it now: Sen. Rodham Clinton.

Or is it Sen. Rodham? Maybe Sen. Hillary.

Get used to it. She isn’t going away.

You can call this event historic. Or surreal. To me, it’s just weird.

The president’s wife, a woman driven by pity and scandal and personal ambition, fueled by no less than the might of the White House, worked tirelessly, if not gracefully, to push her way into a Senate seat in a state she’s mainly viewed from the behind the windows of Air Force One.

I need a drink.

Two hours before the polls closed in New York last night, long before the last voters jammed into polling places that were seeing more business than a willing intern in Washington, the mood at Hillary Headquarters at the superficially shiny, chrome-and-glass Grand Hyatt Hotel was downright glitzy.

Winning the votes of a majority of citizens in this state of allegedly hard-boiled souls is no small feat. Though I’m not entirely sure what it says about us.

Of course, it helped that Hillary’s opponent, the incredibly decent Rick Lazio, never lifted his profile beyond nonentity status.

From the first day he sprang into the Senate race, Lazio ran a ridiculously leisurely, hopelessly sloppy campaign. He was never more than just some guy who was running against Her.

Last night, the crowd inside Lazio’s lair at the staid, faded, chintz-and-brocade Roosevelt Hotel was subdued. But cheerful. Sort of like a wake.

Over at Hillary’s glamfest, volunteers and “VIPs” – I saw Eliot Spitzer and a couple of Hasidim before I was kicked out – crammed into the wide-open Hyatt lobby, where they squealed like seals as the television initially pronounced Al Gore the winner in Florida. Then Michigan.

At Lazio’s dead-man-walking party, somber-faced supporters, sipping $7 drinks from the cash bar, tried in vain to find something to boost their spirits.

“Too close to call,” one man said.

But it was all pretty clear by 10 in the morning.

From the look of things at my Brooklyn polling place, you’d think they were handing out truckloads of free money. The line to vote snaked around the school gymnasium. Twice.

“Good for Hillary,” one neighbor said. “They’re all turning out to vote for her.”

“Bad for Hillary,” another said with equal assurance. “They’re all turning out to vote against her.”

From the Upper West Side to SoHo, things looked pretty much the same. During a normal election – normal meaning any election that doesn’t feature a first lady who’s more reluctant to leave the White House than Nancy Reagan – the only audible sound is the munching of doughnuts by bored volunteers.

At one polling site in the Village yesterday, the voting crowd was abuzz with one question:

“Is Monica here yet? Have you seen Monica?”

But the intern who launched not only an impeachment trial, but fueled an ego-salving Senate campaign – and, who knows, might ultimately be responsible for putting another woman in the Oval Office – was not spotted in the early hours.

Sen. Hillary.

We’ve thought about it for two years. But until yesterday, the twisted notion never quite kicked in. Maybe we’d grown numb from watching the president’s wife pretend she lives in Chappaqua, and cares a hoot about the invasion of black flies in the Adirondacks.

Or maybe star-struck New Yorkers kind of like having her around.

Last night, as we awaited her entrance into the Hyatt ballroom, I had an idea as to what Hillary was thinking:

“Go Bush. Go Dubya!”

Why should Hillary languish for six years in the Senate when she could run for president against a Republican incumbent in 2004?